School Levies Fail Across the Flathead Valley
The levy failures reflect ongoing rebukes from taxpayers amid a trend of declining passage rates in the state. For the four districts with general fund or operating levies on the ballot, the election results mean they’ll have to cut staffing and programming ahead of the next school year.
By Mariah Thomas
Every school levy on the ballot across the Flathead Valley was nixed by voters Tuesday night, according to unofficial election results, reflecting taxpayers’ ongoing rebukes of school levies across the state as levy passage rates decline.
The Helena Flats School District had a land acquisition and requisite levy ask on the ballot. Unofficial results show the land acquisition ask passing by a slim margin of two votes, making it an outlier from the night. But the levy that would allow the district to make that purchase was shot down.
Kalispell Public Schools, Fair-Mont-Egan School, Cayuse Prairie School and Deer Park School each had general fund levies on the ballot, which would have provided a boost to those districts’ bottom lines. Each district described potential cuts to staffing and programming, should the levies fail to pass muster with voters. On Wednesday morning, school administrators and board members at each district said those decisions would come down the pike in the coming weeks and months.
“This result reflects the ongoing challenges of our current school funding system in Montana, which relies on regular local support to maintain the status quo,” said Matt Jensen, the superintendent of Kalispell Public Schools, in a press release Tuesday night.
Under Montana’s current school funding formula, the state legislature funds schools up to a minimum threshold. For schools to grow their general funds beyond that threshold, they must ask voters in the districts for authorization. But over the years, inflation and other factors have squeezed school budgets. Education advocates say levies have become increasingly necessary for school districts to continue operating at their current levels.
Ty Hash, the board chair at Cayuse Prairie School in the east valley, speculated several factors likely led to the levies’ failure: a lack of trust in government, tough economic times and stereotypes that school districts run rampant with wasteful spending among them. Hash said it’s challenging to combat several of those narratives, particularly with what he described as a dearth of engagement from the public with the school district.
Just over 61% of 1,060 voters in the Cayuse Prairie School district voted against the district’s $300,000 general fund levy.
At Cayuse Prairie, the cuts now coming down the pike will have several impacts. The most immediate will be the loss of classroom aides, which the district has heralded as important supports for students. Hash also pointed to an uncertain future for the school’s horticulture program, which has long been a cornerstone of a Cayuse Prairie education. And in the longer term, Hash said his district will remain challenged when it comes to offering cost of living adjustments for teachers and support staff. While Hash said teacher retention at the school has historically been high, the pay question could pose challenges to teacher recruitment down the line.
Multiple other districts said they’d also be facing down budget deficits and would be making cuts.
After its $1.1 million elementary general fund levy went down with 53.7% of the 7,521 people who cast ballots voting against it, Jensen wrote that Kalispell Public Schools would face a budget deficit at the K-8 level. It will spend the coming weeks determining how to address it. That deficit compounds already existing funding discrepancies on the elementary side of the district, which faces the challenge of needing to fill more teaching positions to meet state accreditation standards while receiving less per-pupil funding to do so.
Charlie Wiest, the superintendent/principal of Deer Park School, similarly said his school was in the process of determining where it needed to make adjustments. Its $110,000 operational levy was rejected by 221 of 353 voters. The school’s Crash Zone program, which offers before and after school care for parents, tops the list to be slashed. The school will also likely begin charging students fees to participate in sports and extracurriculars. Beyond those changes, Wiest said things remain uncertain as his board considers its options.
And at Fair-Mont-Egan, the district has said without the passage of a $140,380.45 general fund levy and $250,000 technology fund levy — both of which voters shot down Tuesday — it would face down a budget deficit, causing it to make cuts and pursue measures to bring in additional revenue.
At Helena Flats School District, Superintendent Andy Maheras will not deal with a budget deficit as a result of election outcomes Tuesday night. But he is questioning how to better communicate with voters in his district’s boundaries. His district’s ask to acquire a plot of land across the street tentatively passed, pending final results. However, without the passage of a reserve levy, which 56.1% of 540 voters declined, the district doesn’t have a way to fund that purchase.
“It’s nice and exciting the community recognizes the need to plan for the future, but we need to be able to pay for it,” Maheras said.
Hash, the Cayuse Prairie board chair, said school districts across the state saw levy results similar to the Flathead’s on Tuesday night. In the western half of the state, voters in Helena and East Helena voted down levy asks. Missoula County had mixed results, according to KPAX; and voters in both Ravalli and Lincoln counties shot down bond asks, technology levy asks and safety and security reserve fund asks.
While Hash said it’s disappointing to see levies fail, one silver lining that could come of the levy failures is more pressure on the state legislature to make improvements to the school funding formula. Jensen, too, said he was uncertain of exactly how the Kalispell Public Schools’ board of trustees would move forward with future funding asks — but that the board will be focused on legislative advocacy next year. He said the school funding formula is “fundamentally broken” and overburdens local property taxpayers.
Jensen’s and Hash’s sentiments come as Montana’s School Funding Interim Commission, made up of legislators, political appointees and representatives from the state’s Office of Public Instruction, has conducted a once-a-decade study on the school funding formula over the course of the past year. Throughout that process, there has been widespread consensus the funding formula needs adjustments, even if the exact mechanisms through which stakeholders want to change the formula differ. The commission is charged with making recommendations to the legislature on school funding. It will ultimately be in the legislature’s hands whether to pursue any of the commission’s suggested tweaks.
Several administrators promised that despite Tuesday’s results, they remained committed to offering their students a strong education.
“Regardless of the election outcome, I am grateful for the parents and community partners who stepped forward to advocate for our schools,” Jensen said. “Their willingness to share the great things happening in our classrooms, to have conversations with neighbors, and to support our work in meaningful ways continues to matter.”